On September 29, 1972, Japan and China signed a joint declaration normalizing their diplomatic relations. This year the nations marked the thirtieth anniversary of that historic moment. Events commemorating the anniversary were held in both countries. In 2000, during a visit by Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji to Japan, the two nations agreed that 2002 would be celebrated as the Year of China in Japan and the Year of Japan in China; in 2001, during a visit to China, Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi agreed with President Jiang Zemin to work together to make the anniversary celebrations a success. A wide variety of exchanges and events took place, bringing the people of both countries closer together.

Dinner for 6,000
The most ambitious event was a visit to China by some 13,000 Japanese tourist envoys. The delegation was made up of officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, members of the private-sector Japan-China Cultural Tourism Exchange Committee, and many others. Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen expressed his surprise at the large number of Japanese participants, describing the event as "on a scale not seen in the past." The Japanese group attended the welcome reception held in the Great Hall of the People on September 21, but even this vast venue was not large enough to fit all the participants in. About 6,200 of the Japanese envoys were able to attend.

The delegation also took part in a tree-planting ceremony near the Great Wall, on the outskirts of Beijing, on September 22, and President Jiang unveiled a monument to the friendship between Japan and China. That night, at the Beijing Workers' Gymnasium, 10 groups of young pop stars from both countries performed at the Japan-China Normalization Thirtieth Anniversary Concert. The lineup from Japan included the hugely popular female singer/songwriter Ayumi Hamasaki, who wowed the packed crowd not only with her songs and fashion sense but with a greeting in Mandarin: "Ni hao, wo ai ni" (Hello, I love you). The five groups of Chinese performers included Alan Tam from Hong Kong and Coco Lee from Taiwan.

Making Connections with Music
From October 1 to 3 performances of the Italian composer Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly were held in Beijing. The opera is set in Nagasaki in the 1870s, just after Japan had reopened to foreign contact, and tells the story of a doomed love affair between a geisha and an American naval officer. World-renowned conductor Seiji Ozawa, currently music director of the Vienna State Opera, took the baton for the Beijing performances. Ozawa was born in the Chinese town of Fenytien (now Shenyang) and at one time lived in Beijing. On this occasion he conducted the New Japan Philharmonic and the youth choir of China's Central Conservatory of Music. When the audience heard about Ozawa's connections with China there was an enthusiastic round of applause.

On September 10, before the commemorative events got into full swing, the four members of the popular Japanese rock group Glay met with President Jiang - a highly unusual meeting between rock stars and the head of state of a communist country. Glay were in China to prepare for an October 13 concert in Beijing, and they also attended a meeting between President Jiang and former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, the honorary chair of the Japanese tourism delegation. The Chinese president was in a relaxed, friendly mood, pretending to play an electric guitar the band gave him and complimenting the bleached-blond rock stars on their style.

There were many other thirtieth-anniversary events in both countries. Japan hosted a symposium on bilateral relations after China's entry to the World Trade Organization, and Japanese flocked to exhibitions on 2,000 years of chinaware and on Chinese stamps. Meanwhile, Chinese enjoyed a special Beijing edition of the popular NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) show Nodo Jiman (Amateur Singing Contest), which has been on the air in Japan for 50 years, and a commemorative symposium cosponsored by Beijing University and Nihon Keizai Shimbun Inc.